July 2014

July 31, 2014

Pompous is a word that pops up naturally while writing about Natwar Singh, a lifelong insider to India’s political elite who has occasionally described himself as “an intellectual.” At 83, Singh, a former diplomat, a current scholar, a minor historian, elite insider, disillusioned outsider and, until a few years ago, a confidant of the Gandhi family in India, has written his autobiography titled ‘One Life is Not Enough’.

As the name of the autobiography illustrates, Singh has always regarded himself as someone whose worth has not been fully understood and enjoyed by India. I have no quarrel with people who spend their life in excessive self-regard. It is everybody’s natural right. The first clue of that excessive self-regard is that he retains the letter K before his name. It is a short for Kunwar or prince. I am not entirely sure about his royal lineage, such as it is. I know I am being unnecessarily snidely.

The point is in his autobiography he describes Congress Party president and his once close friend Sonia Gandhi as “authoritarian”, “capricious”, “Machiavellian” and “secretive”. The Machiavellian reference is supposed to be amusing because Sonia Gandhi is of Italian origin. He also challenges the notion that Gandhi chose not to become India’s prime minister in 2004 under promptings of her “inner voice” despite the fact that her party had won a mandate under her leadership and the position was hers for the taking. At the time, it was suggested that in choosing not to become prime minister and anointing Manmohan Singh, Sonia Gandhi had demonstrated the powerfully Indian tradition of renunciation—sacrifice before self sort of non-sense.

Now Singh, who was privy to the inner workings of the party and the Gandhi family, says she gave up not out a sense of renunciation but because her son Rahul strongly dissuaded her out of fear for her life. The Gandhis have gone through family tragedies in the assassinations of first of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1984 and then former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991. Singh’s disclosure would suggest that what was essentially a personal fear was spun as the grandly noble act of renunciation. As revelations go, this is rather lame. So it was not renunciation but fear that prompted her to withdraw. Big deal. It might help a rapidly fading sideline figure of India’s contemporary history sell a few extra copies of his autobiography. That’s about it.

In the same book, Singh also reportedly reveals, going by the media reports, how Sonia Gandhi was in complete control of the Manmohan Singh government throughout its two terms. Again as revelations go, this one too is minor and has been known for a long time. Other than having the virtue of being confirmed by an insider, this means nothing. It will create a political flash the size of what a couple of fireflies do during the early summer days. It is a strong critique of the leadership of a party that Singh was associated for so long. However, the point is that he remained there until he was practically pushed out. It is debatable whether Singh would have made such disclosures had Sonia Gandhi continued to seek his counsels.

Eventually, such books make no difference although Sonia Gandhi has said she would write her own book to counter Singh’s assertions and accusations. Again, big deal. It means nothing other than two politicians slugging it out. It is a sideshow.

July 30, 2014

All Indian mango lovers think their love for the glorious fruit is more passionate and special than anyone else. In my much younger days, I used to be that Indian. Now my view is that of a satisfied lover.

Having skipped almost all mango seasons in India since 1999 I have had to improvise my affair with the fruit here in America. Unlike Indians, Americans do not nearly eroticize the mango. It is just one of the many fruits on the shelves of the supermarkets. I have seen deep red plums and flaming pinkish orange nectarines get picked in the face of sulking yellow mangoes. However, never having been treated as the “king of fruits”, mangoes in America do not feel slighted by this neglect. I do my bit to show special love to them whenever I go to buy groceries. I once picked up a particularly ripe Mexican mango and flaunted it in front of the plums right next to it and said, “Here in your face, plums!” A fellow shopper, an American woman, was first intrigued and then mighty amused by my odd behavior. “You must love mangoes,” she said. “Where do I start?” I said and to her relief I didn’t start. She got my drift, of course.

I have regularly consumed the two most popular Mexican mango varieties—the Ataulfo and the Tommy Atkins. The Ataulfo has a thin pit and generous flesh that has very little fiber. The flesh’s brilliant golden yellow color is among the best I have seen, including in India. It is flavorful and strikingly sweet. The Tommy Atkins, on the other hand, is a bigger, more fibrous variety which can be surprisingly delicious. It has a bigger pit. It is only recently that I have been able to develop an acute olfactory about these mangoes. I can smell ten and get eight right in terms of their ripeness and when to cut.

All mango lovers have their own etiquette and quirks about eating them. Mine is to scoff at those who suck on the pit in an unseemly fashion. I detest it. It is thoroughly inelegant. I grew up in a family that insisted on buying the best mangoes (Are there any other kind really?) and eating them throughout the season. In my immediate family no one sucks on the pit because that really sucks.

I have been having the Tommy Atkins for the last two nights and have been pleasantly surprised to find how luscious and devoid of fiber they have been. I know there are those who like the mango fiber. I am not one of those. The best mango flesh is one that completely melts at the tip of your tongue as if it was never really there. The Mexican mangoes may not have the kind of cult status that some of the Indian varieties enjoy but at their best they can rival the flavor and taste of the best Indian mangoes. Take it from someone who regards himself as next only to Mirza Ghalib when it comes to understanding mangoes.

Since I have mentioned Ghalib I might as well conclude this post with this impromptu poetic tribute of mine.

July 29, 2014

Talking about US–India relations last year on the eve of Secretary of State John Kerry’s maiden visit to New Delhi in his official position, a particularly astute commentator had said this: “Kerry will notice that there is discernible jadedness in the bilateral intercourse. To put it in purely sexual terms, he will likely discover that the foreplay, that happened before his time, was more exciting than the coitus. But then that is not such a bad thing as relations between countries go.”

That was on June 23, 2013, and the astute commentator was yours truly. A year has passed since and there is a new government in place in New Delhi under a prime minister against whom Washington had a sort of restraining order for close to ten years barring him from coming within a few miles of the American shores. (Comedic exaggeration). Now that Narendra Modi is firmly ensconced in New Delhi and President Barack Obama is rapidly approaching his lame duck period, one can only wonder what it is that the two countries can do to live up to the frequently claimed promise as a “defining relationship of the 21st century”. In my judgment, not much. America and India are like that covetous couple who are eminently satisfied in the flirtatious phase of their relationship because they are both apprehensive about what unpleasant surprises taking it to the next level might spring up.

In a speech that was supposed to set the stage for his visit to New Delhi starting tomorrow, Kerry said at the Center for American Progress there is a “potentially transformative moment” in the bilateral relations. It is funny how there is always a potentially transformative moment between the two countries that never really rises to its potential to truly transform. The new narrative, which is quite like the old narrative, has it that India and America are “indispensable partners of the 21st century.” That is the basis on which Secretary Kerry is expected to try and build a strategic relationship. Of course, being a top American diplomat Kerry has to remember that the U.S. business interests are as important as strategic ones when it comes to any country, particularly India which still remains a highly exploitable market for U.S. corporations. Hence this series of caveats, “If India’s government delivers on its plans to support greater space for private initiative, if it creates greater openness to capital flows, it if limits subsidies and strive for competition, and provides strong intellectual property rights, believe me even more American companies will come to India.”

The primary purpose of the visit is for Kerry to co-chair the fifth US-India Strategic Dialogue on July 31 with his India vis-à-vis Sushma Swaraj. The visit is also expected to lay the groundwork for the upcoming summit meeting between Prime Minister Modi and President Obama in September.

During Kerry’s last visit to India in the waning days of the Manmohan Singh government the strategic partnership between India and the United States had appeared much less grand than what was promised in 2009. It is not clear what it is that this strategic convergence between the two can actually mean in specific terms. I say that because while there is a broad, high-level meeting of strategic minds on both sides, it is in specifics such as Afghanistan, Iran, China, Russia, nuclear proliferation, trade and commerce issues and suchlike that the two find considerable divergence. They both know that diplomacy cannot be monogamous and is intrinsically promiscuous because countries have to balance so many complex global equations. India’s dealings with Iran is a case in point. I have written about that earlier. Another example that comes to mind is the way New Delhi voted in favor of a strongly-worded resolution on Israel by the United Nations Human Rights Council contrary to expectations in some quarters that the Modi dispensation might take a more pro-Israel stand over the Gaza conflict.

Rather than forever waxing eloquent about the transformative potential of US-India relations the two should peg it down and work on little less ambitious partnerships that make a quantifiable difference in a diversity of global issues. It is not for me to give a list of what those could be because no one pays me to do that. I could if I had to and was paid to do so. One that comes to my mind off the cuff is about how India and America can together transform the world’s health sector drawing on their well-known strengths.

July 28, 2014

“We live amid a global wave of anthropogenically driven biodiversity loss: species and population extirpations and, critically, declines in local species abundance. Particularly, human impacts on animal biodiversity are an under-recognized form of global environmental change. Among terrestrial vertebrates, 322 species have become extinct since 1500, and populations of the remaining species show 25% average decline in abundance. Invertebrate patterns are equally dire: 67% of monitored populations show 45% mean abundance decline. Such animal declines will cascade onto ecosystem functioning and human well-being. Much remains unknown about this “Anthropocene defaunation”; these knowledge gaps hinder our capacity to predict and limit defaunation impacts. Clearly, however, defaunation is both a pervasive component of the planet’s sixth mass extinction and also a major driver of global ecological change.”

--An abstract from a new study by Stanford biology professor Rodolfo Dirzo and his team about warning about early stages of Earth’s sixth mass extinction

The abstract above suggests that we have possibly entered the early stages of a mass extinction which is being caused by human activities. Don’t be confused by the words defaunation and extirpations. In street lingo what Professor Dirzo and his team are saying is that we humans are screwed because humans like to screw ourselves. We may still have some time to try and reverse this systematic destruction of biodiversity but it will come only from our collective global will to do so. Humans look at the the faunal and floral abundance and diversity around them and mistakenly conclude that nature is a bank of life that can be drawn on indefinitely. Not true. In my own somewhat twisted way I have frequently written about nature from a philosophical standpoint. Almost exactly two years ago, that is on July 30, 2012, I wrote the following. I think it bears repeating in light of Professor Dirzo’s study being published by the journal Science.

I don’t think the purpose of any celestial body, particularly planets and moons, is to engender, nurture and perpetuate life.

Life may be an incidental byproduct of complex processes and fusions taking place between naturally occurring elements but I have never been convinced that it is a deliberate outcome. The notion that creating and supporting sentient life, namely you and I and everything that is alive on our own planet, is fundamental to why the earth exists is absurd. It is not as if we are the primary concern of our home planet.

I have thought about this theme for quite sometime but lately my interest has been intensified by, of all things, a particularly strong summer in America. When the trees in my yard started shedding brown leaves some weeks ago and the grass turned scraggy yellow because of the temperatures remaining steady in the 90 degrees F. it struck me that the earth has no vested interest in preserving itself in our best imagination. It is nothing but one relentlessly unstable system that is forever responding to its most unstable features at any given time. There is no grand destiny built into it.

The ease with which it can create and destroy itself in part or in whole ought to be profoundly unsettling to those who believe in the larger purpose to not just the earth but everything that surrounds us in the universe. I never believed in the school of thought that attributes a larger purpose to our existence and, as I grow older, I do even less.

The near drought-like conditions that many parts of America are experiencing merely tell me that the earthly climate does whatever it needs to to respond and adjust to the conditions prevailing at a particular point. It pays no attention to what its consequences might be for the glorious sentient life that envelops it. It can never be an equal or emotional relationship between the planet and those who live on and off it. For instance, unremittingly beautiful flowers can wither in a matter of hours because of the heat wave and the earth will be none the sadder for it.

Respect is not mutual in the earth-life equation in the sense that simply because we respect and even worship nature there is no guarantee that she will return the gesture. It is because the general time scale over which things unfold is so vast that we mistakenly attribute a degree of permanence to it all. One can always say that for all practical purposes we do live on a planet that is by and large stable in relation to individual life spans. However, there is no unique reason that in those individual life spans something enormously disruptive cannot happen which is big enough to change the course of this planet in a very real sense.

The fundamental point of this odd rumination is that the earth does what it does without any particular regard for what it may mean for sentient life. That truth has to hold everywhere in the universe as well. The destiny of the universe is not necessarily to conceive life and then do its absolute best to sustain it and ensure that it attains a higher level of existence. To put it succinctly, the universe does not give a damn about our feelings and aspirations. It does what it does because that’s all it can do.

July 27, 2014

It is both amusing and heartening to see that the decidedly working class Indian sport of Kabaddi is attracting loads of showbiz glamor and corporate muscle with the launch of the Pro Kabaddi League (PKL). I say amusing because it reminds me of my childhood where Kabaddi and Kho-Kho were the two predominant and uniquely Indian games that we scoffed at. These were not mandatory sports in school but were strongly encouraged in the face of a gradually growing stranglehold of cricket on our sporting choices.

If we played Kabaddi at all, it was mainly to mock the game. One of the ways we ridiculed the game was this stupid little line in Gujarati that went “Kabaddi Kabaddi Kabaddi, Tari Chaddi Bagadi Bagadi Bagadi” (Kabaddi Kabaddi Kabaddi, You pooped your pants). The line had no meaning other than having a minor poetic virtue of rhyme. The game was also called “Hu Tu Tu Tu”, a sound that merely reinforced our low opinion of the sport. It would be tempting to describe our derisive rejection of these two quintessentially Indian sports as an illustration of a colonized mindset except that we were born much after India’s colonization had ended. I think it was nothing more than prejudice that prevented us from warming up to it. The simple fact is that I did not see much to like in the game where players from the two rival teams take turn to raid the territory of the other even while breathlessly chanting “Kabaddi Kabaddi” or “Hu Tu Tu Tu”. The idea is for the raider to go deep inside the enemy territory and touch a particular line without being felled and trapped by the rivals. In the event that the raider is trapped he or she has to do everything thing to somehow touch the dividing line between the two sovereigns.

Kabaddi is a physically taxing game in the sense that it demands great physical agility even as it requires sound breathing techniques because the raider has to keep saying ‘Kabaddi’ all through their duration inside the enemy territory. Any interruption or trailing off in the Kabaddi Kabaddi chant and you are out. At least that was the rule when I was growing up. One did not understand then that it is an ingenious sport whose evolution was unique to India where a vast majority had no access to expensive sporting equipment or grounds. The same goes for Kho-Kho, which I do not feel like describing in detail here. Suffice it to say that Kho-Kho too is also a very physical game that demands great agility and ability to run the gauntlet from the rivals.

Now that Kabaddi has come under corporate, television and showbiz patronage it is bound to emerge as a hot ratings property. Star Sports has begun live broadcasts of the league matches. I would not be surprised if Kabaddi acquires a huge national profile and becomes a highly valued franchise like the Indian Premier League for cricket.

While watching the highlights of the first season I was comparing the conditions of the sport in my childhood with what we see as part of the league. It was played out in the open on a rough ground that was often full of rocks which frequently bruised the players’ knees and elbows and every other limb.The generally hot sun ensured that the bruises and cuts laced with dust and sand caused an agonizing pain. The league matches, in contrast, are played indoors in what seems like an air-conditioned court. It seems they use artificial turf of the kind used for badminton and other games. The graphics on TV screen are of the same slick quality as you see in any international sporting spectacle.

The players look well-fed and well looked after. Team members pose for group photos with their hands folded in front, wearing an expression of fierce determination, quite like what one recently saw during the FIFA world cup. There is a definite visual standardization of sports made possible by TV patronage and software technologies. The PKL matches look nothing like the working class sport that one grew up watching and playing occasionally. It has the glitz now which one would have never associated with it earlier. The fact that movie stars have bought PKL teams would guarantee that they enjoy glamor which Kabaddi had singularly lacked. Kho-Kho could well be next in line.

July 26, 2014

Republican Congressman Curt Clawson and Bharatiya Janata Party Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) K Lakshman may be separated by some 10,000 miles but they are joined by their willful ignorance and prejudice. One, namely Clawson, infers from the skin color and appearance of two senior Obama government officials that they must be foreigners while the other, Lakshman, mischievously suggests that India’s best known woman tennis player must have loyalties toward Pakistan because she is married to a Pakistani cricketer.

U.S. Republican Congressman Curt Clawson

At their heart Clawson and Lakshman are both captives of their painfully narrow and prejudiced worldview. When Clawson, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the leap was relatively straightforward from brown skin to foreigner when he presumed that the two Indian looking officials, Nisha Biswal of the State Department and Arun Kumar of the Commerce Department, were not American. Lakshman on the other hand had to cross some hoops before calling the tennis player Sania Mirza “the daughter-in-law of Pakistan” because she is married to Pakistani cricketer Shoaib Malik. For Clawson, the inference was not overtly egregious when presumed reflexively that Biswal and Kumar must be representing the Indian government at a Congressional hearing. For Lakshman, the inference was consciously egregious. It is not my case that one is better than the other. I am merely pointing out the difference in semantics.

During the hearing, whose content was first reported by the Foreign Policy magazine, Clawson said while addressing somewhat flustered Biswal and Kumar, “I’m familiar with your country; I love your country. Anything I can do to make the relationship with India better, I’m willing and enthusiastic about doing so.” According to the magazine, the freshman lawmaker asked the two if ‘their’ government could loosen restrictions on U.S. capital investments in India.”

”Just as your capital is welcome here to produce good-paying jobs in the U.S., I’d like our capital to be welcome there. I ask cooperation and commitment and priority from your government in so doing. Can I have that?” he pressed on gamely sanguine in his ignorance that the two officials were very much from the U.S. and represented the Obama administration.

To Biswal’s credit, she kept her calm and chose not to express any outward disgust. She said, ““I think your question is to the Indian government.”

It was not clear if even after being told that Clawson realized his fuckup because he said, “OK, let’s see some progress.” If anyone here who needs progress desperately, it is him.

In Lakshman’s case, the prejudice was pretty unambiguous and classic. Apparently exercised that Mirza has been appointed a brand ambassador of the newly minted Indian state of Telangana, he made a rapid journey from Mirza being a woman (sexism), a Muslim (prejudice) and married to a Pakistani (rabid nationalism) to therefore unreliable in keeping with the thinking of a fair number of Indians. In a tragic demonstration, Mirza had to issue a statement asserting her “Indian-ness” and go on NDTV to express how hurt and saddened she was by Lakshman’s offensive comment.

She told NDTV’s Barkha Dutt that she did not know what prompted Lakshman to say what he said. There is no great mystery here. He represents regimental thinking where he sees connections and conclusions where none exists. As I said, the fact that Mirza is a woman, a Muslim to boot, and married to a Pakistani, and a Muslim to boot, is a bonanza for him. For him, it is like going to a village fair of prejudice where a lot of cheap and mischievous thrill has to be had.

It is instructive that neither Clawson nor Lakshman felt the need to apologize. If they did, I have not seen it.

July 25, 2014

The clear gap between the Indian government’s ideologically-driven assertions of equity in the current Israel-Palestine conflict and its eventual vote in favor of a strongly worded United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC)resolution against Israel might suggest a possible dissonance between professional diplomats and their political masters. Of course, any foreign policy move, particularly one as politically and diplomatically fraught as the UNHRC vote, has to be eventually approved by the highest level of the Indian government. With that as the backdrop, it is strange that before the vote India’s Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj had asserted that the government would not take any position in the current conflagration in Gaza because “both are our friends”.

In saying that Swaraj was, of course, trying to walk a finely calibrated ideological line of her Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), whose sanguine avowal of Israel has been well-known. After the government tried to discourage a parliamentary debate over the unfolding tragedy in Gaza, apparently so as not to step on Israeli toes, there was expectation in some quarters that the government may illustrate that partisan thinking through a vote either in favor of Israel or, at the very least, abstain like 19 other members of the 47-member UNHRC did. The language of the resolution which said the UNHRC "strongly condemned" Israel's "prolonged occupation" of Palestinian Territory, and condemned "in the strongest terms" the "widespread, systematic and gross violations of international human rights and fundamental freedoms arising from the Israeli military operations" in Gaza was in complete repudiation of Swaraj’s earlier position of equity. Notwithstanding that, New Delhi voted in favor of the resolution along with 28 other countries. Only the United States voted against the resolution but that was a foregone conclusion.

It seems to me that professionally astute Indian diplomats may have played a significant behind-the-scenes role in ensuring a continuity in India’s historic stand on this issue. Even though Swaraj is a seasoned player of politics and policy, she is still new to the foreign ministry. Her earlier ideological certitudes, under likely promptings from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, ought to have come in conflict with diplomatic subtleties as evident in the eventual vote. I am not privy to the inner workings of the government but it is conceivable that it was Prime Minister Modi himself who took the eventual call in allowing the vote in favor of the UNHRC resolution. The vote, although historically predictable, might have surprised Israel which probably expected the strong BJP majority government to stand behind its action in Gaza.

For now, Israel is preoccupied with the Gaza problem but as things settle down—as much as they settle down in that region—it would perhaps find a way to express its views on India’s vote. I doubt if there are specific consequences to India’s action because it has been New Delhi’s long-held position. In any event, as countries there is a geostrategic imbalance between the two. India can easily withstand the diplomatic or strategic cost of sticking its position vis-à-vis Israel even though I am not sure what that cost could be.

July 24, 2014

Rupert Murdoch likes to hoard media properties. At 83, his insatiable acquisitiveness has to be irrespective of whether he needs more media properties. It has to be about his wants. He just wants things. I suspect media properties are his version of Viagra. There is no other way to explain as his 21st Century Fox goes about making a bid on Time Warner for $73 billion.

As the world’s biggest and most diverse media mogul, Murdoch has long been past the stage where he acquires properties for influence. Political and cultural influence are now an almost incidental byproduct of his ravenous appetite. It is a measure of his success that he now sounds like an apocryphal character. If a novelist had created a Murdoch-like character before Murdoch existed, they would have been dismissed as ridiculous fantasists.

That Murdoch’s media grab is not good for the media is a given. It is obvious and needs no stating. I am merely fascinated that a character like him can exist in real life. Intimations of mortality do not stand in the way of a character like Murdoch. He is like a bizarro Yogi in the sense that he wants as much as he can get without being particularly attached to any specific property once he has acquired it. Real yogis, as some of you might know, renounce worldly possessions. Of course, there are karm yogis but I would hesitate to call Murdoch that even though he has some attributes of one.

It is reported that among the main factors motivating Murdoch to go for Time Warner is the latter’s HBO which the media mogul really covets. As someone who has a long track record of eventually getting what he wants, there are possibilities that he might end up owning Time Warner as well. Media watchers are justifiably worried that at a time when television is enjoying an extraordinary golden age of diverse creativity because of competition, the kind of consolidation that Murdoch is seeking to pull off could effectively end it. It is a valid fear but it seems counterintuitive to me that Murdoch, who is a thorough entrepreneur first, would embark on something self-defeating. Those who follow him and know him say his mind his sharper than ever notwithstanding the vagaries of age. However, the question still remains—why does he want so much when what he needs has been met several times over? This question is moot, of course, for someone like Murdoch because he now does things simply because he can.

I sometimes wonder whether he even knows what he owns any longer. At a very trivial level, I am reminded of an Indian newspaper owner who once “fired” a tea vendor delivering cups of tea in his office because he did not know the tea boy was not his employee in the first place. I have this vision where Murdoch wakes up one morning and declares that he wants to acquire News Corp. and 21st Century Fox only to be told by an obsequious lackey, “But sir, you already own them.” Murdoch replies, “So what? I still want them.”

July 23, 2014

What began as a few strokes of red on the Fresh Paint app is now a 40 inches by 20 inches real print on paper. Of the more than 100 digital artworks that I have created so far, I had not printed any until yesterday. As part of potential business development I ordered this print at a local Office Max.

The first test that someone other than me might find this piece attractive and unusual came from the young man at the office store when he said, “That’s a cool abstract.” He wondered from where I had downloaded it because he did not immediately suspect that I could be the one who had painted it. When I told him it was my creation, he repeated the compliment.

While Facebook friends have been unfailingly generous in their appreciation of my digital artworks, it was for the first time that an actual physical representation of one of those was being seen by an outsider. Dear friend and fellow journalist turned successful painter Prakash Bal Joshi told me on his last visit to Chicago that it is a rather uplifting feeling to be seen as an “artist.” I had not experienced that until yesterday when I saw the way the young man’s expression changed after I told him it was my work. It is not my case that this is art, let alone good art, but in so much as it means that what I created had any impact at all on someone other than me, it was a thrill.

I have in the past shamelessly plugged my creations here. Among the things I have said is the ease of diverse merchandising potential of what I produce. While they can always be framed and used as art pieces on walls, they also lends themselves rather well to other things. They can be on garments, linens, plates, shoes or anything else that might potential buyers like. For instance, I think this could make quirky lingerie or a shawl.

The Office Max staffer was a bit unsure of my reaction because there are ripples in the paper caused by the heavy red and black inks. It is just as well because when I put it on my sofa the paper enveloped its contours well. It almost looks like a throw.

July 22, 2014

The world is never short of examples that repeatedly prove that the human race has evolved much less culturally than it likes to delude itself. The shooting down of the the Malaysian airliner over Ukraine and the debilitating renewal of killings between Israel and Palestine merely underscore that fact.

Sure, we are better dressed than what we were during the era when humans interbred with Neanderthals. You just have to look at the ties that Vladimir Putin or Benjamin Netanyahu wear to confirm that. Sure, we mask our racial, religious, economic and cultural pathologies and antipathies rather well. Sure, we are better spoken. But those are all just trimmings. They are superficial. The primal violent core very much remains the way it has always been. If a Neanderthal male, with his brutal reputation and stereotypical looks to match, returned today, I am sure he would find it impossible to process the sheer complexity of violence we commit and the diversity of ways in which we inflict and propagate it.

What has evolved most strikingly since our cave dwelling days is the violence delivery systems. Roughly hewn wooden clubs, for all their brutal power, were still inherently restricted to individual combats. Now we can fly 35,000 feet in the sky and still cannot escape being shot down. It is astonishing how thin the veneer of the so-called evolutionary sophistication really is. Across societies, men act and speak as if they have spent their entire lifetime eliminating any signs of that evolutionary sophistication.(The reference to men in particular is deliberate because a female-dominant civilization would have been arguably different.) We don’t realize how precarious the cultural equilibrium really is. It can shatter under the slightest of strain.

This profound malaise of violence is universal and irrespective of at what stage of civilizational maturity a particular society is. What changes are its forms and propagation. It is a matter of style versus substance. The style may change but the substance very much remains fairly common. This may be a depressing vision but it at least the merit of being real. It would be foolish of me to deny progress in certain areas which has been magical by ancient standards. Technological advancement of the last two decades alone should illustrate how far we have traveled. Unfortunately, that journey has been along a very narrow swath. I am not entirely certain how much, if any at all, we have moved in terms of cultural evolution.

Do forgive me for this random and somewhat disjointed rumination because it took shape in the midst of doing the dishes this morning. After all, scrubbing off the dried remnants of Hyderabadai chicken biryani and scrambled eggs can allow only so much of sophistication of thinking.